II 







I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

||%.^.V/op,risi,t?io/i7 

{ J/Ae// XT ' 

r . \ 

{united states of AMERICA.^ 



CHRIST'S 



INFANT KINGDOM. 



KEV. J. T. TUCKEK, 



APPROVED BY THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION. 



H .i\ 



BOSTON : 
CONGREGATIONAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY. 

1870. 






15 



«ASBlNOTCI!« 



To THE Parents and Pastors of Christ's Lit- 
tle Ones : 

I have gathered up the grain which is here 
ground over, from many fields of observation and re- 
flection, through* a full generation of ministerial cares 
and experiences ; and, what I have produced in this 
much-wrought hue of study, I offer to your kind at- 
tention. The topic is always urgent, and is gaining 
increased interest and acceptance in the Christian 
community. The conviction is deepening in serious 
minds, that just here is one of the pivotal points on 
which society is to swing around into a purer state 
than ours. The thoughts, now put into a brief and 
condensed form, may get a reading from some who 
would not be drawn to a longer discussion. I be- 
lieve them to be true, and hope they may be helpful. 

Chicopee Falls Parsonage, July, 1870. 



COE'TEI^TS. 



WHAT HE SATS OP IT 

THE SUBJECT STATED 

METHODS TO EFFECT THIS 

EARLY CONVERSIONS 

A CASE SUPPOSED 

THE INFANT HEART SUSCEPTIBLE OF GRACE ... 17 

BIBLE-CASES OF YOUTHFUL PIETY ....•• -^ 

29 
POINTS THUS FAR MADE 

31 
BIBLE-THEORY OF FAMILY LIFE 

THE COVENANT WITH ABRAHAM 

THE SEAL OF THAT COVENANT ^^ 

BAPTISM IN CHRIST'S INFANT KINGDOM 

IZED CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH 

WHY THIS ORDINANCE IS SO MUCH NEGLECTED IN OUR 

. 60 

CHURCHES 

THE ARGUMENT CONCLUDED 

70 
CHILDREN IN A CHRISTIAN HOME 

•TO 

THE SPIRIT OF THE HOME-LIFE 

CHILDHOOD'S LONG DEPENDENCE ON PARENTAL CARE • 80 

83 
HOME GOVERNMENT 

89 

CASES OF HOME DISCIPLINE 

93 

HOME TEACHING AND DEVOTION 

99 
PARENTS CANNOT DELEGATE THIS WORK . . • • 

4 



BAPTIZED CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH . . • • ^^ 



CHEIST'S INFANT KINGDOM. 



WHAT HE SAYS OF IT. 

Then were there brought unto him young children, 
little children, infants, that he shoujd put his hands 
on them, and pray ; and his disciples rebuked those that 
brought thwn. But, when Jesus saw it, he was much dis- 
pleased, and said unto them. Suffer the little children to 
come unto me, and forbid them not ; for of such is the 
kingdom of God. And he took them up in his arms, put 
his hands upon them, and blessed them. 

The Gospels. 

More is contained in these ever-precious 
words than the implied promise, as gener- 
ally understood, that young children dying 

5 



6 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

enter the heavenly world. They infold 
another, and, in its place, quite as impor- 
tant a truth, — that, through the gathering 
of young children into Christ's fold, the 
kingdom of God and of heaven is to be set 
up and perpetuated on this earth, as a 
principal agency. 

" They brought unto him their babes," 
writes the evangelist Luke. This gives 
us the guiding clew to the way in which 
this work must be mostly done, especially 
in its earlier stages. Sacred art has 
caught the right idea, and beautifully set 
it forth ; for all the painters show us the 
mothers of these little ones leading or 
bearing them to Jesus. No one can doubt 
whence comes that look of tenderest love. 
And who but the mother should bring the 
babe of her own bosom to Him who still 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 7 

is sajdng, " Suffer the little children to 
come unto me " ? 

THE SUBJECT STATED. 

The end which Christianity proposes to 
reach is the moral and religious salvation 
of society. Christ came into this world 
thus to make all things new. 

No system of mere civilizing forces has 
effected or nearly approached this result. 
The best condition of communities has 
been their simplest periods, which ordina- 
rily has been their infantile. Age has cor- 
rupted, and not improved them. Men and 
society have generally run down into 
heart-demoralization under every form of 
merely natural culture, however an intel- 
lectual or artistic refinement may have 
flourished. Such refinement has been 



8 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

only on the surface, covering untold in- 
ward vice. The main tendency of Greek 
art, with all its exquisite grace, was im- 
moral. 

The question is seriously arresting not a 
few vigorous thinkers among us, whether 
the same thing is not threatening our own 
social structure, though based on at least 
nominally Christian principles and conces- 
sions. There are aspects of the subject 
involving statistics of pauperism and crime, 
of ignorance and brutal barbarism, on the 
one hand, and, at the opposite extreme, 
of luxurious and atheistic mammonism, 
which are not a little alarming. 

We indeed fall back upon the sure word 
of prophecy to sustain our faith and hope. 
But, then, we must be careful not to mis- 
take the methods of prophetic fulfilment. 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 9 

The end which. God proposes, and the means 
through which he proposes, are never to be 
put asunder. The latter are as imperative 
as the former is positive. While, therefore, 
we hold the assured behef of the triumph, 
ere long, of a true Christian civilization, it 
is a very grave question, always in order, 
whether we are mistaking the divine meth- 
ods provided, and consequently alone suffi- 
cient, to secure the social salvation. 
. We fix, at the outset, this position, that 
a personal regeneratioA to holiness is es- 
sential to the setting-up of Christ's king- 
dom among men. Society has had every 
other kind of culture, and is not yet saved. 
The next, and the only adequate, change 
which we know of, is the penetration of 
its entire structure with the truth and 
grace of Christ. 



lo Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

METHODS TO EFFECT THIS. 

There are two methods which may be 
relied on to reach this end. One, adult 
conversions; the other, the sanctification 
of children through parental and other 
co-operating influences. 

Adult conversions must go on so long 
as men and women grow up having no 
hope, and without God in the world. 
But a glance at Christian and heathen 
lands will show the small relative gain 
thus made against the kingdom of sin. 
What length of time, yea, of uncounted 
ages, it might take thoroughly to Christian- 
ize our earth even by revivals of great fre- 
quency and power, one would not like to 
attempt to calculate. No issue lies be- 
tween revival-efforts in our churches, and 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. ii 

the theory to be unfolded in this treatise. 
There will be room enough for both to put 
forth their utmost activity before the 
promised day of "the restitution of all 
things " shall dawn. No friend of revivals 
need slacken his hand in their wise and 
earnest promotion. But to rely mainly on 
this or any method of gathering the sheep 
into Christ's fold, while the lambs are as 
much neglected as they have been, is as 
devoid of good Christian common sense 
as it is of scriptural warrant. 

Besides, adult conversions do not give, 
as a general fact, that symmetrical, consis- 
tent, solid piety, which is needed more 
than ever now. Too much dross is mixed 
with the gold; too many crooked things 
in temper, habits, history, to be made 
straight. With such materials largely 



12 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

making up our churcli-membersliips, too 
mucli labor will still be needed to keep old, 
easily-besetting, and long-indulged sins 
from usurping the dominion of the heart, 
and from stirring up discord, or bringing 
in coldness and languor, among the friends 
of Christ. 

The Church and the world need a style 
of piety which shall not consume nearly so 
much of its power in keeping itself from 
backsliding and apostasy. This must be 
secured through infant-sanctification ; by 
generations of the seed of the Church 
growing up into the fruit-bearing trees of 
the Lord's garden. 

EARLY CONVERSIONS. 

In support of this position, I adduce 
several considerations : — 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 13 

We are entitled to look for a method 
of propagating true religion among men, 
somewhat equivalent, in manner and 
scope, to the way in which unholiness 
maintains and distributes its power 
among men, though in contrast, of 
course, with its spirit. We know how this 
offspring of the night and darkness lives 
and grows. It roots itself in the soil of 
human being at the very outset. Sin in- 
fects the soul. From the original act of 
human transgression, each individual life 
springing from that stock has taken a bias 
towards evil. An impure fountain has 
sent forth impure streams; not streams 
which will grow muddy and foul by flow- 
ing through defiling soils, but which bear 
outward and onward the impurities of the 
spring-head itself. Can a bitter fountain 
send out sweet waters ? Can a clean 



14 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

thing come from an unclean ? We must 
measure correctly, so far as we can meas- 
ure at all, the forces of earthly evil in 
seeking their correctives. We must sup- 
pose that God measures the whole accu- 
rately, and, as he works in grace as well 
as in providence through competent means, 
that he has intended the cure to take 
action upon the disease just as soon as is 
possible in the nature of the case. 

Sin, then, marks and permeates the 
human race, — the world estranged from 
God. It sweeps down the centuries like 
an ocean turned into a swift descending 
river. Its only counteracting force at all 
commensurate is the consecrating power 
of holy character through successive gener- 
ations of the regenerate, from parents to 
children ; thus creating another great tide 



Christ 's Infant Kingdom. 1 5 

of spiritual influence, whicli shall by and by 
take up and bear onward the common sen- 
timent and life of society. In this mighty 
rivalry, sinfulness has the start most disas- 
trously, by its long and universal hold on 
human nature. But, reasoning from the 
known good-will of God towards us, we 
must conclude that there is a way of ma- 
terially reducing this odds against holiness 
in the earth : so we push backward the 
agencies of regenerative mercy into the 
beginnings of mortal and immortal being 
to avert the poison-working of depravity 
in its very earliest germs. 

A CASE SUPPOSED. 

A supposition will assist my meaning. 
Select a starting-point of religious influ- 
ence, as when Noah came out of the ark 



1 6 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

(eight souls in all) ; but that is too far 
away. Take, then, the landing of our pil- 
grim-fathers. Suppose their piety had 
steadily and earnestly lived in their 
descendants ; reproducing itseK, with but 
little exception, through the six or eight 
generations between them and us. Or 
take one family through the same time. 
The two who began it a haK-dozen gener- 
ations ago were united in the Lord. Their 
offspring followed their devout examples ; 
and so, downward, the seal of the renewing 
Spirit has rested upon them until now ; 
making it a Christian stock in a special 
sense. Does any one doubt that the grasp 
of original sin and of natural depravity 
would be greatly weakened in its hold 
upon that lineage, giving a thousand prob- 
abilities of continuous conversions to 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 17 

Christ in its circles, over and above those 
of an irreligious line of descent ? The case 
here imagined is not an unknown one alto- 
gether, and should be indefinitely multi- 
plied. 

THE INFANT HEART SUSCEPTIBLE OF GRACE. 

Another consideration in support of this 
position is, that divine grace can more 
easily impress the infant than the adult 
heart. I use the word "infant" in the 
parallel terms of our Lord's words, cited at 
the beginning, — to signify the very early 
stages of human life. But I have a spe- 
cial eye, just here, to what we mean liter- 
ally by infancy, — the period back of actual 
sinning, yet not of innocence as before the 
Fall, and of the consequent need of a re- 
newing work of God upon it. This is my 



1 8 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

thouglit, tliat the commencing of the 
sanctifying power of the Spirit of holiness 
in the child need not wait until sin is 
known and chosen by the understanding 
and the will. 

This fact is generally conceded, and is 
eagerly and firmly held with respect to 
those who die in infant unconsciousness of 
evil and good. The ground of belief in 
their salvation is, that, through the atoning 
blood and gracious mediation of our Lord, 
they are fitted for life eternal. Fitted how, 
and from what, and why ? Fitted by a 
new birth — young as they may be, out of 
an impure moral state, and because ''by 
nature " they are in it, — even a state of 
'' wrath " — for a holy heaven. If we mean 
any thing by infants being prepared for 
heaven by the Spirit of God, we must mean 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 19 

as mucli as this. Or we have only to say 
that they need no work of grace in them 
for heavenly joys, and then we fall back 
on the tabula rasa theory; that is, that 
the infant soul is but a sheet of blank 
paper, not yet written upon in any way, 
— for good or evil. 

But now, if God can graciously fit a 
child so early to die, why can he not fit it 
to live as well, by communicating to it, just 
as early, an equally effective impulse to- 
wards holiness, which it shall never lose 
amid all after-assaults of wickedness? 
Why may he not so put a young soul into 
the moulds of his Spirit, as that it shall no 
more have the imprint fade out, if contin- 
uing in the world, than if removed to 
heaven ? Is the one continuallv done, and 
the other not possible to be done at all ? 



20 Christ^ s Infant Kingdom. 

If the dying infant can be regenerated 
for heaven, cannot the living infant be 
regenerated for this world ? 

We are not denied this hope and trust 
from the Christian doctrine of the new 
birth, as taught by our Lord ; namely, that 
it requires a personal repentance and faith 
in its subject. Certainly it does in all who 
are mature enough to exercise these spirit- 
ual acts. They who are of years to hear 
and understand preaching, or to read the 
Scriptures, and are not Christians, have no 
other gospel of salvation but this of " re- 
pentance towards God, and faith in our 
Lord Jesus Christ." 

But shall we limit the Almighty Spirit ? 
Shall we say, that while depravity has its 
full sweep upon the infant nature, accord- 
ing to its incipient conditions, the counter- 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 21 

acting grace of the Purifier cannot breathe 
also over that pliant nature, awaking the 
first germs of a better fruitage ? If we 
will so limit the divine work for the child 
that lives, why not necessarily, too, for the 
dying child? But what has our reason- 
ing to do in prescribing methods and 
bounds to that mysterious power, the 
working of which is as the wind, the sound 
whereof is heard, but man cannot tell 
whence it cometh, or whither it goeth : so 
is every one that is born of the Spirit. 

We know the methods, so far forth as 
revelation teaches them, of God's work 
in minds arrived at a teachable age ; but, 
anterior to this, no man can tell what the 
divine Spirit can do, has done, and waits 
to do on a wondrously-enlarged scale, in 
bringing up to that point a multitude of 



2 2 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

these little ones touched by his gracious 
love, who shall never remember a time 
when they were converted to Christ, be- 
cause their first recollections were those 
of praise and tender love to God and to his 
dear redeeming Son. Something like this 
Is believed, if any thing is meant by the 
wishes, often expressed, that our children 
may be sanctified from their birth. It 
should demand very strong testimony to 
disprove that God may have methods of 
grace with the human soul, by which he 
can check the growth of sin in it from that 
early date, and go on checking it as the 
years go on, without in any way infringing 
its freedom. Nor need it disturb this per- 
suasion that I cannot understand the mode 
of that gracious visitation; for I am not 
able to explain, even to myself, all the agen- 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 23 

cy of God in saving the adult soul, wliile 
believing most fully the fact which our 
Lord announced to Nicodemus, '' Except 
a man be born again, he cannot see the 
kingdom of God." 

BIHLE-CASES OF YOUTHFUL PIETY. 

It was a beautiful device of the late 
Prince Albert of England to erect at 
Windsor Castle, for the benefit of his 
young children, a statue of Edward VI., 
pointing with his royal sceptre to this 
verse on the page of an open sculptured 
Bible, " Josiah was eight years old when he 
began to reign ; and he did that which was 
right in the sight of the Lord, and walked 
in all the ways of David his father, and 
turned not aside to the right hand or to 
the left." But these examples are valuable, 



24 Chris fs Infant Kingdom. 

not only as models for imitation ; not only 
as teacliing us the fact of piety beginning 
with the first dawn of consciousness; for 
beyond this they show us an important part 
of the human instrumentality of this fact. 
Take the cases of Samuel, John Baptist, 
and Timothy. 

The case of Samuel presents these 
points, — a religious father and an emi- 
nently devout and godly mother ; a conse- 
cration of the babe to God in most fer- 
vent prayer, even before its birth; yea 
more, a receiving his very existence as an 
answer to prayer in order that he might be 
consecrated to the Lord " all the days of 
his life ; " a ratification of the vow by lend- 
ing him to the Lord from earliest boyhood, in 
the service of the tabernacle. The phrase 
''lent to the Lord" may imply a contin- 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 25 

ued sense of maternal responsibility, as well 
as solicitude for this son of many hopes. 
The result of all this was, that " the child 
Samuel grew on, and was in favor, both 
with the Lord, and also with men." 

John Baptist was likewise the son of 
eminently rehgious parents, with the same 
ante-natal anxieties and spiritual prepara- 
tions for a holy life ; the whole power of 
the mother's desire having • been concen- 
trated upon his early sanctification. " And 
the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit," 
as the servant of the Lord, of whom he had 
spoken by the prophet, "Behold, I will 
send my messenger, and he shall prepare 
the way before me." 

Timothy's father was a Greek, perhaps a 
pagan worshipper, and also a man of edu- 
cated tastes. His mother and his grand- 



26 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

moth 31 were excellent Christians, of whom 
St. Paul wrote, " When I call to remem- 
brance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, 
which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, 
and in thy mother Eunice, and I am per- 
suaded in thee abo." He was early 
trained in the Scriptures, which he knew 
the power of in a remarkably rich experi- 
ence as a disciple of Jesus. 

The influences which are here brought 
to bear on the formation of character are 
domestic, parental, but especially maternal. 
They embrace the concentration of prayer 
and devout feeling upon this point of infant 
regeneration, — the claiming (so to say) of 
the power of the renewing Spirit to re-cre- 
ate from the first that which is to be sent 
forth into life under the conditions of pro- 
bation and redemption. They recognize 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 27 

the closeness of tlie mother's relation to 
the child, as giving her the privilege, and 
placing her under the obligation, of a para- 
mount agency in its early spiritual reno- 
vation. These bibhcal illustrations of our 
doctrine are not without similar corroborat- 
ing cases in the religious biographies of 
more recent times. 

As a matter of fact, the explanations of 
which are very obvious, far more depends, 
in the Christian nurture of young children, 
on the mother's than on the father's influ- 
ence. This may be the reason, in part, 
why, in the providence of our loving God, 
so many more mothers than fathers are 
reached by the converting grace of Christ. 
Is he looking after the souls of the 
little ones in this dispensation of his 
mercy ? — looking towards the fulfilment 



2 8 Christ 's Infant Kingdom. 

o£ his own tender command, "Feed my 
lambs " ? 

Here, moreover, we have the out-crop- 
ping of the transmitted or hereditary faith, 
which, Uke a stratum of sohd rock, under- 
laid these Scripture genealogies, — the faith 
" of thy mother Eunice, and thy grand- 
mother Lois, and that is in thee also," — not 
passed downward mechanically from moth- 
er to child, but as creating a powerful ten- 
dency and pressure Christward, — a drift, a 
current as of long running and deepening 
streams, or as the preparation of a rich, 
warm soil all ready for the reception and 
nourishment of the young plants of right- 
eousness. 

This is just the difference, as I appre- 
hend it, between the effects of a continuous 
reUgious and irrehgious influence in a line 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. ' 29 

of family descent, — that, in the one, the 
common nature (so to call it) of the fami- 
1}^ stock is like a field subjected for a long 
time to good tillage ; not so, indeed, that 
weeds will not spring there profusely, if a 
careful cultivation be not still kept up ; but 
it is in a good condition, comparatively, 
for a useful crop : while the other is just a 
piece of forest land, uncleared and un- 
fenced ; or some low, undrained swamp, or 
an old worn-out and given-up glebe, which 
looks like any thing rather than producing 
the means of life to man or beast. 

POINTS THUS FAR MADE. 

The progress of our argument thus far 
is this : the establishment of the kingdom 
of Christ over our world is the grand aim 
and end of Christianity. To rely chiefly 



30 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

on adult conversions to effect this is an in- 
adequate dependence. Christ himself says, 
that his kingdom is of children, Uttle chil- 
dren, infants. Its hope, its reliance, must 
be in infant consecration and sanctification, 
by generations of the seed of the Church 
coming forward as Christian disciples. 
We are entitled to hold this position, 
because, — 

1. As unholiness begins so soon to viti- 
ate our race, it is to be expected that grace 
may also have a very early beginning to 
counteract its power. 

2. Divine grace can more easily impress 
the infantile than the adult heart. It 
does effectually in them who die, to fit 
them for heaven. Why not, then, to fit 
them who do not die, to live ? 

3. Scripture examples are conclusive of 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 31 

the fact of early holiness through domestic 
piety, in the transmission of faith in God, 
from generation to generation, through his 
eaily regenerating grace ; thus shadowing 
forth a mighty instrumentality of the pros- 
pective spread of true religion among men. 

BIBLE-THEORY OF FAMILY LIFE. 

These individual examples of youthful 
piety, with our previous line of thought, 
have opened the way to a more thorough 
examination of the general biblical doc- 
trine of the subject under consideration. 
We shall find a clearly marked philosophy 
of human life, and the adaptation of 
specific means to give this effect, each 
worthy of our very careful study. 

It is obvious that the populating of the 
earth by human beings might have been 



32 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

effected as easily by successive creative 
acts of divine power, as its inhabitation 
was thus begun in the persons of the ori- 
ginal pair. Or this might have been sur- 
rendered over to a wholly lawless and un- 
restrained license in the human species, 
as it has been in the merely animal and 
irresponsible orders of life. 

Instead of these methods of prolonging 
our race, the divine Father instituted in 
Eden the law and covenant of marriage 
as the basis of the family organization, 
and made the continuance of mankind the 
sacred prerogative of this ordinance from 
the beginning : in defence of which con- 
stitution of domestic love and life stands 
one express command of the decalogue 
the seventh ; and another, the fifth, as an 
additional buttress to protect its inviola- 



Christ's Ltfant Kingdom. 33 

bility. Moreover, the whole force of scrip- 
turar condemnation and promise and ap- 
peal, from first to last, moves like a unit 
in the interests of purity, chastity, and 
against every thing like promiscuous indul- 
gence of the passions here involved. The 
Sermon on the Mount answers to the voice 
on Sinai with an intensified emphasis. 
The deeper we get into the clearer spir- 
itual discernments of Christianity, and feel 
the invigorating, cleansing influences of 
its more heavenly life, this strictness of 
prohibition gathers a closer grasp. 

Why, then, this central, most ancient 
feature of God's administration of our 
race ? There should be a very command- 
ing reason for it. There was and is. Turn 
to the last of the prophets before our 
Lord's incarnation (Mai. ii. 15) : " And 

8 



34 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

did not he make one ? " One married pair 
and fountain of the human posteritj'-. And 
could not he have made more in the same 
way ? " Yea, had he the residue of the 
Spirit," — the creative energy still to work 
as he might determine. Then " where- 
fore one?" Mark the reply, ''That he 
might seek a godly seed. Therefore take 
heed to your spirit, and let none deal 
treacherously against the wife of his 
youth." This solves the whole problem. 
So Calvin on this text : " He sought then 
the seed of God ; that is, he instituted 
marriage, that legitimate and pure off- 
spring might be brought forth," — legally 
legitimate in order to a moral and spiritual 
purity. With this agrees the turning of 
" the heart of the fathers to the children, 
and the heart of the children to their 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 35 

fathers," in the concluding verse of this 
prophecy, and which finds a yet fuller in- 
terpretation, as an element of Christian 
power, in the citation of this Scripture by 
St. Luke, as applicable to the forerunner 
of our Lord: "And he shall go before, 
him, in the spirit and power of Elias, to 
turn the hearts of the fathers to the chil- 
dren, and the disobedient to the wisdom 
of the just ; to make ready a people 
prepared for the Lord." This expresses 
God's original thought respecting all who 
should be born of the '' one " whom he 
made in the beginning, ''male and fe- 
male." 

If, then, that primeval " one " should 
have fallen through temptation into sin ; 
yet, if repenting and amending, there was 
still the possibility, thenceforward, of a 



36 Chrisfs Infant Kingdom. 

faithful keeping upon tlie path of pious 
character and duty for their offspring, 
from age to age, through the sanctities of 
the family ordinance. Had that possibility 
become a reality, how mighty a check 
would soon have been laid on rebellion in 
the earth ! 

But that rebellion, in fact, took some of 
its earliest and most defiant strides in re- 
volt against this very law of marriage- 
faith, as it has ever since nourished its 
godless forces at the same sensual source ; 
Sodom being the name for uncounted 
centres of licentiousness from the first days 
of human apostasy. 

THE COVENANT WTTTH ABRAHAM. 

We turn another page of primitive his- 
tory. While the nations of the old-world 



Christ^ s Infant Kingdom. 37 

cradle are left for a while to propagate 
heathenish corruption, we strike a nar- 
rower vein of divine endeavor to secure 
'' a holy seed " in the person of Abraham, 
and the compact made with his household. 
Even Dr. Hedge admits that we here 
emerge upon historic ground; finding, at 
length, the first individual who is any thing 
more to us than a name (Primeval World 
of Hebrew Tradition^ p. 253). Respecting 
the relations of God with this "father of 
the faithful," we have a direct and ample 
revelation. 

God's purpose with Abraham was first 
national : " I will make of thee a great 
nation." "I will make thy seed as the 
dust of the earth ; so that, if a man can 
number the dust of the earth, then shall 
thy seed also be numbered." " Look now 



38 Christ's Ltfant Kmgdo77i. 

toward heaven, and tell tlie stars, if thou 
be able to number them. And he said 
unto him. So shall thy seed be " (Gen. 
xii. 2 ; xiii. 16 ; xy. 5). This was the pre- 
diction and the pledge of Hebrew empire. 

A second promise had a religious object. 
Its idea is thus unfolded : '' For I know 
him, that he will command his children, 
and his household after him ; and they 
shall keep the way of the Lord, to do 
justice and judgment ; that the Lord 
may bring upon Abraham that which he 
hath spoken of him" (Gen. xviii. 19). 

To accomplish the designs of this sepa- 
ration of Abraham from the idolatrous 
world, Jehovah entered into a specific 
covenant with him as a binding ordinance 
upon him and his posterity. " The Lord 
appeared unto Abram, and said unto him. 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 39 

I am the Almighty God ; walk before me, 
and be thou perfect. And I will mak^ my 
covenant between me and thee, and will 
multiply thee exceedingly. And Abram 
fell on his face ; and God talked with him, 
saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is 
with thee, and thou shalt be a father of 
many nations. . . . And I will establish my 
covenant between me and thee, and thy 
seed after thee, in their generations, for an 
everlasting covenant ; to be a God unto 
thee, and to thy seed after thee " 
(Gen. xvii.). 

The founding of a new nationality is 
here recorded, in order to the rescue and 
the preservation of the worship and service 
of the one true God among men. It was 
made with a direct regard to this, as St. 
Paul writes of it to the Romans, '^ To the 



40 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

end the promise miglit be sure to all the 
seed ; not to that only which is of the law, 
but to that also which is of the faith of 
Abraham, who is the father of us all [all 
believers] (as it is written, I have made 
thee a father of many nations), before him 
whom he believed [that is, Abraham, 
standing in the presence of Him whom 
he then and there took at his word] , even 
God, who quickeneth the dead, and call- 
eth those things which be not as though 
they were " (Rom. iv.). 

The whole conception of the Hebrew 
state was this of " a holy nation, a chosen 
generation, a peculiar people." And the 
ever-springing germ of this perpetual 
separation unto God was the consecration 
of the children into the faith of their 
fathers. There was no anticipation, in the 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 41 

theory of this compact, of a contrary 
style of education. To go in this way, 
and not another, the child should be 
trained. The Mosaic Scriptures, the 
books of David, Solomon, and of the proph- 
ets also, are full of the thought of this 
transmission of the religious life of the 
land, as well as of its political ordinances, 
to future ages, — the later writings mostly 
in the way of stern rebuke to the 
people for their failure to meet the 
divine intention in this regard. " These 
words which I cominand thee this day 
shall be in thy heart ; and thou shalt teach 
them diligently unto thy children, and 
shalt talk of them when thou sittest in 
thy house, and when thou walkest by the 
way, and when thou liest down, and when 
thou risest up." " Set your hearts unto 



42 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

all the words wliich. I testify among you 
tills day, which ye shall command your 
children to observe to do, all the words 
of this law" (Deut. yi. 6, 7; xxxii. 46). 
The same position is also maintained in 
the numerous threatenings against the 
want of this sense of parental responsi- 
bility, this exercise of parental care. 

It is noticeable that the channel of bless- 
ings, from Abraham, the founder of the 
Hebrew State and Church, downward, is 
domestic : " And I will make of thee a great 
nation ; and I will bless thee, and make 
thy name great ; and thou shalt be a bless- 
ing; and I will bless them that bless thee, 
and curse him that curseth thee ; and in 
thee shall all the famihes of the earth be 
blessed" (Gen. xii. 3). The promise 
looks alike to this, as its end and its 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 43 

means. Abraham's righteousness is to 
bless his seed, as the families springing 
from his loins, and all others, shall possess 
his piety. 

It is a blessing of piety, not of political 
greatness and perpetuity, here ultimately 
contemplated. The apostle comes again 
to the explanation of these ancient 
pledges : '' And the Scripture, foreseeing 
that God would justify the nations ^ 
through faith, preached before the gospel 
unto Abraham, saying. In thee shall all 
nations * be blessed. So, then, they which 
be of faith are blessed with faithful Abra- 
ham " (Gal. iii. 8, 9). 

This, then, was the covenant of Jeho- 
vah, that the ancestral faith, going down 
as an inheritance from Abraham to his oif- 

* The same word in the Greek : rd ei9t^. 



44 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

spring, should bless them, in all their gen- 
erations and families, as the chosen people 
of the Lord; but not that it should al- 
waj^s be limited to this people. That" plant 
was to be cultivated in this nursery- 
ground into a strength and fruitfulness 
which would bear the ingrafting, in after 
times, of shoots and scions from the wild 
olive of the other nations, — the outlying 
heathen or Gentile tribes. That tree 
could take these grafts, for it was not a 
Jewish, but essentially a Christian tree of 
righteousness, as St. Paul has just told 
us, and as Christ also intimated to the 
Jews : " Your father Abraham rejoiced 
to see my day ; and he saw it, and was 
glad," — rejoiced that he should see it and 
its salvation as the ultimate and completed 
outcome of the blessing thus promised the 
believing patriarch. 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 45 

THE SEAL OF THAT COVENANT. 

The covenant with Abraham had a seal, 
or sign of fulfilment. No such document 
is executed formally, until it is signed, 
sealed, and recorded. "And God said 
unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my cove- 
nant, thou and thy seed after thee in 
their generations. This is my covenant, 
which ye shall keep between me and you, 
and thy seed after thee : every man-child 
among you shall be circimicised. And the 
uncircumcised man-child . . . shall be 
cut off from his people : he hath broken 
my covenant" (Gen. xvii. 9, 10, 14). 

This was primarily a religious rite, and 
only secondarily, and by derived use, a 
state or civil act. It belonged to the He- 
brew Church, and to the State only as re- 



46 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

lated to this, according to the theocratic con- 
Btitution. St. Paul to the Romans writes, 
" And he received the sign of circumcis- 
ion, a seal of the righteousness of faith." 
And to the Colossians he explains its 
meaning as ''the putting-off the body of 
the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of 
Christ." Thus Lange on Gen. xyii. 10 : 
that circumcision "should be the symbol 
of the new birth, i.e., of the sanctification 
of human nature from its very source and 
origin, is shown both by the passages which 
speak of the circumcision of the heart 
. . . and from the manner of speech 
in use among the Israelites, in which 
Jewish proselytes were described as new 
born." Its value was (a) to keep God's 
covenant with them continually and vivid- 
ly in mind, and (6) to secure God's grace 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 47 

to them as they should thus avail them- 
selves of it in his own appointed way. It 
was not the introduction of a rite in use 
among neighboring nations for sanitary 
purposes, though, within a very restricted 
circle, it may have been practised by oth- 
ers.* It was a specific sign or seal of God's 
living and abiding power and presence to 
preserve a holy seed in Israel according to 
the election of his grace, in the keeping of 
his commandments ; and it was to be vir- 
tually perpetual, as ever bearing witness 
to the same covenant of God with man, 
and as a source of holy influence on the 
earth- 
Therefore, when that wonderful sermon 
was preached at Pentecost to thousands of 
Jews gathered from every land, the apos- 

* Smith's Bible Dictionary; " Circumcision.'* 



48 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

tie closed up his invitation to them to en- 
ter the Christian fold with these thorough- 
ly Jewish words : '' For the promise is 
unto you and unto your children." What 
promise ? Jehovah's to Abraham. What 
promising? A godly seed. ''That the bless- 
ing of Abraham might come on the Gen- 
tiles," — those "afar off". . . whom "the 
Lord our God shall call". . . "that we 
might receive the promise of the Spirit 
through faith" (Acts ii. 39; Gal. iii. 14). 
We are, consequently, in precisely the 
same line of the divine plan and working 
now, as were those elder brethren of ours, 
with respect to family piety and house- 
hold consecration to God, and with re- 
spect, moreover, to the means of drawing 
out of the divine covenant its intended 
grace. We have that covenant, and its 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 49 

seal also, and the Holy Spirit of Christ, to 
fulfil to us, in our children, the promised 
inheritance of righteousness. That prom- 
ise is " unto us and to our children " as 
fully, to say the least, as it was to any 
Israelite. 



BAPTISM IN Christ's infant kingdom, 



Planting ourselves at the opening of the 
Christian era, this is obvious, — that no son 
of Abraham after the flesh would have 
ever looked at the Christian Church as a 
spiritual home, if he could not have 
brought his offspring with him into the 
same fold. They had dwelt together in 
the Hebrew fold for as long a period before 
Christ's coming as we live after that event. 
Our Saviour's words — "Suffer the little 
children, and forbid them not, to come 
4 



50 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

unto me " — were in full accord witli the 
religious habit of his countrymen's 
thoughts and life. These little ones, too, 
belonged to his kingdom on earth as well 
as in the heavens. He did not design to 
have them left outside of his Church, while 
their parents are sheltered there. A Jew 
would have felt this to be unnatural and 
cruel. Should a Christian think it kind ? 
Infants have a mark of the Good Shep- 
herd to receive now as always. They are 
to be taken into the enclosures of his sheep. 
" Feed my lambs " is his charge to his pas- 
tors. Feed them where? By the road- 
side ? Or not rather inside the fold, the 
Church ? 

The question is not. Where is infant 
baptism commanded? but, where is it 
repealed ? 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 51 

The form is changeable, unessential. 
The fact is one and permanent. Infant 
consecration to the Lord by a visible reli- 
gious act has stood on the statute-book of 
divine enactments since Jehovah made the 
covenant of his grace, in Christ, with the 
father of his believing and obedient 
Church. Then was its Christian signifi- 
cance and power established in reality, if 
not in name; and its observance was 
sacredly bound on all the children of that 
friend of God forever. If not, where was 
its repealing act so hidden that no New- 
Testament writer could find it ? 

I almost fancy that I see the reader 
smiling at the above phrase of the " Chris* 
tian significance and power" of an ordi- 
nance which has fallen so largely out of 
the observance of too many of our churches. 



52 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

Just here is one of the places where it is 
so hard to walk by faith, and not by sight, 
— so hard for gospel-disciples to imitate 
Abraham four thousand years ago. " And 
Abraham believed God ; and it was counted 
to him for righteousness." ''And Abra- 
ham took Ishmael, his son, and all that 
were born in his house, and circumcised 
them the selfsame day, as God had said 
unto him." What good could that do 
them ? asks some doubting Thomas. 

It put God's mark of ownership on 
them, that they were his. It obeyed 
God's direction, who is best qualified to 
arrange the channels through which his 
heavenly power shall reach human hearts. 
It pledged the parental head of the house- 
.hold most solemnly to personal holiness in 
their own behalf, as the presiding authority 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 53 

and guide of the family, and as the me- 
dium of a sanctifying influence to the 
offspring given to them in the Lord. It 
did not itself confer grace unto salvation ; 
for Ishmael roved off into paganism. 
Nor does the preaching of the gospel save 
all or any who hear it, as a merely human 
utterance ; yet it is not to be given up. 

Infant baptism has been perverted into 
a sacramental regeneration j thus defeating 
its sanctifying power, and raising up vio- 
lent opposition against the usage. But 
adult baptism has been the occasion of 
equally gross superstition. There are im- 
mersionists who insist, that, in and by the 
act of submersion in water, sin is sup- 
planted by holiness, and the subject passes 
into the state of grace. The dogma of 
adult baptismal regeneration has as firm a 



54 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

hold in corrupt churclies as that of the 
cleansing away of infantile pollution in 
baptismal water. Grave perversions of 
adult baptismal efficacy were of early ori- 
gin. The narrative of the baptism of Con- 
stantine the Great, in Stanley's '' Eastern 
Church" (pp. 314, 315), is an illustration in 
point. After twenty-five years of a nom- 
inally Christian confession, during which 
period he " had been considered by Chris- 
tian bishops an inspired oracle and apostle 
of Christian wisdom, . . . had opened the 
first general council of the Church, . . . 
had joined in the deepest discussions of 
theology, . • . had preached to rapt au- 
diences," on his death-bed, this powerful 
head of Christendom received this ordi- 
nance; having thus delayed under the 
superstitious notion that in it was to be 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 55 

secured " a complete obliteration and ex- 
piation of all former sins." But such per- 
versions of the sacrament of adult baptism 
are not accepted as valid objections 
to its practice. The Lord's supper has 
likewise been perverted into a Popish 
mass ; thus utterly changing its nature, and 
degrading its sanctity. But this proves 
nothing but the folly of its corrupters. 
Any means of spiritual grace can be 
turned into the same kind of sacramental 
machinery. Most of these have been so 
turned. Yet that furnishes not the small- 
est reason against their proper and legiti- 
mate use. 

The question is this : Has the wisdom 
of our loving Father, from the founding 
of the Church upon the promise of Christ 
in the household of Abraham, recognized 



56 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

the consecration of children to God, in 
parental faith, as a means of securing to 
such children the renewing grace of his 
Spirit ? I afiBrm it on the scriptural authori- 
ty now set forth. It is a divine ordina- 
tion, and is no more to stand at the bar of 
our judgment, to pass on its fitness to such 
an end, than is any thing else which God 
has ordained for this or any other pur- 
pose, and which he has, as here, never 
repealed or countermanded. But, in its 
Christian form, this ordinance has a freer 
usage than before, according to the nature 
and spirit of the new dispensation, which 
is richer and ampler in its applications 
than its forerunner. All have the privi- 
lege of it, as St. Paul tells the Galatians : 
'' For as many of you as have been bap- 
tized into Christ have put on Christ. 



ChTnsfs Infant Kingdom. 57 

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is 
neither bond nor free, there is neither male 
nor female; for ye are all one in Christ 
Jesus. And if ye are Christ's," mark the 
linking backward and forward, " then are 
ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to 
the promise " (Gal. iii. 27-29). We go to 
ruin, so we confess, if we slide from the 
original covenant of faith. Then why not 
hold to the whole of it as well as a part ? 
Did God put more into that covenant than 
was needed ? No. 

" The words of his extensive love 

From age to age endure: 
The angel of the covenant proves, 

And seals the blessings sure. 

"Jesus the ancient faith confirms 

To our great fathers given: 
He takes young children in his arms, 

And calls them heirs of heaven." 



58 Christ s Infant Kingdom. 

BAPTIZED CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

The baptized children of the Church are 
related to it as probationers for full mem- 
bership when they shall give credible 
evidence of personal regeneration. This 
should be early expected. They should be 
under its careful instruction as the lambs 
of Christ's flock; should be taught from 
their first intelligent days that they are 
his by parental consecration. To give our 
children thus to the Lord, and then to turn 
them adrift to rove as fugitives wherever 
temptation may lure them, is as unchris- 
tian as to unite ourselves to his Church, 
and then to fall back into any kind of 
worldly inconsistency. Our Congregation- 
alism needs some definitely accepted system 
of juvenile care and education, more di- 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 59 

rect and spiritual than the Sabbath school 
furnishes, to prepare its baptized youth 
for church-coiDmunion, — something like 
that which, among our Methodist breth- 
ren, organizes all this portion of the young 
into classes, under suitable leaders, as can- 
didates for full church-relations. Or, pas- 
tors should take this work into their own 
charge as a regular part of their ministerial 
duty, as in the Lutheran and the Episcopal 
Churches ; from which we need not decline 
to receive a help like this, for fear of lapsing 
into an undue formalism. The church 
which baptizes its children is bound to as- 
sume the responsibility of their oversight in 
conjunction with parental watchfulness, and 
as a stimulus to this which is apt to be neg- 
lected. To deny that an infant baptized 
into the name of Jesus is a part of his 



6o Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

Church, in the measure above indicated, is 
certainly to reduce the act to a very un- 
meaning form. Yet this is often virtually 
done. 

WHY THIS ORDINANCE IS SO MUCH NEG- 
LECTED IN OUR CHURCHES. 

One cause has been the lack of a clear 
conception of the truth just noticed. It 
has not been perceived, and consequently 
not felt, how this dedication^ of children to 
the Lord should and does affect their rela- 
tion to Christ and his Church. Hence it 
has grown to have little significance, and 
to be widely neglected. Another cause 
has powerfully worked to the same end. 
Our civil institutions, and our whole na- 
tional life, have, from the days of Plym- 
outh Rock, been constantly developing 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 6i 

a spirit of individual responsibility, which 
is making itself injuriously felt in at least 
some directions. Our theory of secular 
duty and rights is, that every one is a free 
and independent citizen, responsible to no 
one but God and liis own conscience. We 
have nothing hereditary among us save by 
personal will. People are units ; every one 
beginning and ending his own history in- 
side his individual record. This tendency 
has received impulse from our very natural 
dislike of the political and ecclesiastical 
systems, against which our Church • and 
State are alike a protest, until we are in 
danger of running far beyond the limits of 
discretion, in what in its place is indis- 
pensable to a true manhood and a free 
commonwealth. 

How is this influence operating here ? 



62 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

In the outer circles of a professed respect 
for general Christianity, that is, among 
very liberal Christians so called, it has 
taken the ground to let children grow up 
without any creed-instruction one way 
or another; so that, when they get old 
enough to believe any thing or nothing, 
they can take their choice, — be Christians 
or Pagans in their own right, as they 
please: and this so as not to abridge 
their natural Hberty; or, as Dr. Holmes 
once told us in an "Atlantic Monthly," 
so as not to make them ''Flathead In- 
dians," as that eminent naturalist avers 
most ministers' children, and, by inference, 
most of their docile flock who feed in 
evangelic pastures, unhappily are. 

Inside the Christian circle itself, this ex- 
aggerated individualism shifts off responsi- 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 63 

bility from itself by the covert plea, that, 
as each one must answer for his own soul 
before God, each one should look out for 
his own salvation, without expecting too 
much help and sympathy from others. 
Hence a very common indifference to the 
impenitent outside the Church, and a lack 
of hearty fellowship and love within its 
enclosures. 

But, worse than this, it actually turns the 
hearts of parents away from instead of to 
their offspring, by weakening down almost 
to nothing the conviction of parental obli- 
gation for their salvation. Thus they are 
turned over to the hope of a conversion to 
Christ, no one can tell when, — in some 
religious revival; or, if worst comes to 
worst, on a dying-bed. Let the question 
reach you, parents of unregenerate chil- 



64 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

dren, whether your hope has steadily rested 
on the sanctification of your offspring in 
early childhood, as God's blessing on your 
covenant-keeping piety ; or not rather on 
their conversion by and by through Sab- 
bath-school agencies or revival-pressures. 
Do you remember your fault to day ? 

Hence, again, this notion of independ- 
ent action has kept back multitudes of our 
little ones from Christ in the sacrament of 
baptism. 

It is not for want of Scripture-texts to 
command it. There is not one word of the 
Lord which specifically tells us to keep 
the first day of the week as our day of the 
Lord. Still we do it, as our fathers did, 
from his resurrection ; and this because the 
Jews had a Sabbath ; and we reason right- 
ly here, that a Christian should have at 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 65 

least as much of religious privilege as an 
Israelite. The change of time from one 
day to the next makes no difference : why, 
then, should the baptismal change of a 
mere outward form in the consecrating act 
of children to God make any more differ- 
ence? 

It would not, but for this fiction of indi- 
vidual rights. It never has in countries of 
Christendom where society is organized on 
a less personal theory. We have let our 
American feeling in this matter (for such it 
unquestionably is) bias overmuch our reli- 
gious eonvictions. We have let our political 
ideas run over into our Christian practice ; 
and we think it as unreasonable to baptize 
our children unto God in faith that they 
shall grow up citizens of his kingdom, as 
it would be for us to pledge their adhe- 



66 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

sion, in advance, to some party in the 
State. 

And so we are often told by believing 
parents, that they would not object to 
bring their little ones to the baptismal 
font, provided the act might be repeated 
in after life, should these sons and daugh- 
ters then desire it ; for it looks like de- 
priving them of a right to give themselves 
thus to Christ, if ^his dedicating act is 
now done, once for all, in their behalf in 
their unconscious or youthful days. And 
these very parents, baptized in their in- 
fancy, have perhaps felt (they have said 
so) that -they were forestalled in a privi- 
lege which they wish had been reserved 
for their own personal enjoyment. 

But this idea of individual privilege and 
right thus carried out is an altogether 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 67 

extravagant assumption. While it is true, 
so far as adult duty goes, as enforcing re- 
pentance, and belief in Christ, and the 
working-out of salvation in earnest, per- 
sonal diligence, because each one must 
stand or fall to his own Master, it is just 
the reverse of true or biblical with regard 
to the relation of Christian parents to 
their ofEspring. It is not natural ; for we 
are continually taking grave responsibil- 
ties in their behalf, because we ought to, 
and cannot avoid it. We do it in many 
secular interests without a question of its 
propriety. We should be most censurable 
if we did it not. It is just as right and 
obligatory in religious concerns. God has 
made us parents for this very purpose. 



68 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

THE ARGUMENT CONCLUDED. 

This, then, is the sum of the argument. 
The Author of grace and redemption has 
made a perpetual covenant with his church 
of believing disciples, which covenant of 
salvation is ''to us and to our children " in 
all generations. It has ever had a seal 
which he afl&xed to it, and has never re- 
moved; the pattern of it only having 
been changed under providential sanc- 
tions. It is a mark of Christ's flock, — the 
sheep and the lambs alike. Its purpose is 
to bind human souls to God and holiness ; 
to perpetuate this consecration by a visi- 
ble as well as spiritual ratification of 
vows from parents to their offspring; to 
be a household bond of faith and love and 
hope ; to secure, in a word, a Christian 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 69 

posterity from a Christian stock. So far 
from being a trifling, unimportant, un- 
scriptural ceremony, this bringing young 
children to Christ in baptism is to be re- 
garded as the direct path to their introduc- 
tion into his kingdom of grace. I do not 
say that the heart is renewed in this ordi- 
nance ; certainly it cannot be renewed by 
it : nor that an unbaptized child dying is 
not saved. God does not so restrict his 
mercy, nor visit on us the consequences 
of unfaithfulness to his methods for its 
bestowment. So, in riper j^ears, the un- 
baptized, as well as others, are converted. 
But the multitudes of these in Christian 
families, as elsewhere, who need conver- 
sion, is a weighty proof that we can have 
no general household piety passing down 
from generation to generation, taking up 



70 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

the newborn souls, and bringing them 
from the first stages of life ' under the 
grace of the renovating Spirit, thus shap- 
ing them in their earliest mould for piety, 
Christ, and heaven, until this doctrine and 
this ordinance of infant-consecration are 
restored to the household and to the 
Church as the seal and sign of a living faith 
in Christ, and covenant with him, by his 
help, to devote every child given to paren- 
tal love to him as his own rightful prop- 
erty, and then to train it up as a Chris- 
tian child " in the nurture and admonition 
of the Lord." 

CHILDREN IN A CHRISTIAN HOME. 

The practical details of this training and 
nurture, to which the remaining pages must 
be given, is not the easiest part of this 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 71 

subject. It is less difficult to prove a 
truth by argument than to put it into 
working order. Then, again, the fair 
working of this truth demands an already 
confirmed religious character in the family 
growth as a preparation for its full effect- 
iveness ; that is, the sanctification of the 
rising race is to be looked for in the line 
of a Christian family stock running back- 
ward long enough to furnish an accumu- 
lated power of grace, and to insure the 
inheritance of covenant mercies accord- 
ing to the biblical doctrine of a "godly 
seed " now stated. And, more disheart- 
ening than all, we have to meet at the 
threshold of our practical suggestions and 
appeals a disbelief, in many Christian 
parents, that God has any plan of this 
kind concerning the children of his peo- 



72 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

pie. Further : they feel a sense of dis- 
couragement about their offspring's sal- 
vation, because of past neglect. And, 
in parents just coming under these re- 
sponsibilities, there is too often a lack of 
steady purpose to begin and continue their 
domestic life in the right way. These 
obstacles, however, only increase the need 
of a careful and faithful dealing with pa- 
rental consciences and hearts. 

To bring our children to Christ as the 
rule, and not the exception, of their condi- 
tion, leads me to remark, first, upon 

THE SPIRIT OF THE HOME-LIFE. 

We have seen that the family was 
organized as God's sacred institution to 
perpetuate holiness among men ; antedat- 
ing the church, the ministry, the priest- 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 73 

hood, the Sunday school, — itself God's 
primeval church and ministry of grace. 

This design of the household, therefore, 
shows what should be its spirit. It 
should be thoroughly Christian in that 
bright and summer-like glow of a cheer- 
ful piety which no more needs a label to 
tell us what it is than does the sunshine 
of a June morning. 

I cannot do even physiological justice 
to this part of the subject, without here 
saying, that this Christian sunshine is an 
important preparation for maternal cares. 
Children should be anticipated and ac- 
cepted as a blessing from the Lord. The 
contrary habit of feehng is one of the 
particularly bad symptoms of a civiliza- 
tion too corrupt and selfish and debiUtated 
to meet the proper duties of humanity. 



74 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

To regard a family offspring as a trouble- 
some interference with other business or 
pleasure, to fret and worry about these 
burdens, is enough to poison beforehand 
the life of a child, as it also shows a lack 
of trust in the divine providence, and of 
acquiescence in the divine plans, which 
quite unfit that parent to be the conveyer 
of a holy nurture to the young spirit in 
her keeping. Mothers should know that 
their Christian duties begin before God 
puts these little ones into their arms. It 
were a false modesty to hide a thought so 
vital to this subject. 

The spirit of a home which shall be a safe 
place for a young immortal should show a 
steady control of religious considerations 
in its common life. We very well know 
what is meant by the temper of a family, 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 75 

as peaceful or quarrelsome, or selfish or 
benevolent, or vain or ambitious or frivo- 
lous or slanderous, or devoutly Christian. 
That is the atmosphere, whatever it be, 
which the members of that home-circle 
are daily breathing. The children absorb 
it at every pore, and are nourished or 
poisoned by it. It impresses infancy with 
its forces, in tones of the voice, expressions 
of the familiar faces, and the keynote of 
the continual routine of work and play. 
It is a mistake which indolence or petu- 
lance often tries to believe, that very 
young children are not much impressed by 
surrounding things. So far from this is 
the fact, that the first five years, which 
are years mostly of mere external impres- 
sions from domestic scenes, do actually set 
the growth of most children in a way that 



76 Christ's htfant Kingdom. 

is never constitutionally clianged even by 
converting graoe. 

Your cliild is not a month old before it 
begins to be impressed, favorably or unfa- 
vorably, by your way of handling it, 
speaking to it, using it. It lies on its 
mother's lap a babe without the power of 
speech ; but her countenance is the book 
from which that infant mind reads its first 
lessons of feehng and thought, — an illus- 
trated page beaming with smiles and 
peacefulness, or roughened with frowns, 
defaced by fretfulness and passion. It 
cannot speak ; but its ear is quick to catch 
the gentle tones of affection, or the sharp 
explosions of impatience : and, if its under- 
standing be not old enough to tell in what 
they differ, its heart knows well enough 
that they are as unlike as light and dark- 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 77 

ness. Then come the questions of right 
and wrong, which, in a few years, will be 
asked and answered, — answered, not in 
words only or chiefly, but in the conduct 
and bearing of every-day life. That child 
is learning its commandments out of your 
temper and behavior. It is getting its 
sense of obligation from what it sees is 
your code of truth and duty. You are 
educating its conscience to a delicate 
sensitiveness, or to a dull, heavy sluggish- 
ness. The first time it fairly knows that 
a parent is doing, speaking, or feeling 
wrongly, is like twisting a tender nursery- 
twig into a crooked stick, and tying it 
there. O lamentable twist ! 

The parent is to that child in the place 
of God. How faultless, then, should that 
parent be ! Parental goodness, kindness, 



78 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

calmness, truthfulness, justice, should be 
to the young child its best revelation of 
God's fatherly excellence and love. Chil- 
dren do get their earhest impressions of 
God from the parental character. What 
should that be ? What is it ? 

The spirit of the home as thus de- 
manded is not the product of what are 
called easy circumstances, nor need it be 
prevented by narrow and straitened con- 
ditions in life. It is impossible to say 
that the former are, on the whole, better 
adapted to secure it than the latter. It 
is the product of God's daily grace in 
hearts which realize, and love to remember, 
that they live to be a vital link between 
God and the souls which he has given to 
their direct forming influence. It is a 
holy spirit within them, strong and steady, 



Chris fs Infant Kingdom. 79 

and heavenly enough, to repress all efforts 
for mere show and rivalry in dress, furnish- 
ings, style, as an object of ambitious 
desire; to check, before spoken, every 
word of detraction and ill-will ; to subject 
the anxieties of life as to food and raiment, 
and secular getting-on in the world, to a 
hopeful trust in an ever present and loving 
God; thus keeping hushed the voice of 
repining and murmuring, of ''fretting 
against the Lord," or, what is the same 
thing, against the orderings of fortune and 
misfortune. It is plain that we are con- 
cerned here with a host of " little things," 
which only a soul habitually at peace 
with itseK, and raised above the world by 
union with Christ, can properly adjust. 
Very likely you are tempted to say, " This 
is beautiful, but impossible." That unbe- 



8o Chris fs Infant Kingdom. 

lief will doubtless make it so to you ; but it 
is not impossible. It has been and is an 
actual, if not an absolutely perfect, attain- 
ment in circumstances as difficult as yours 
can be. It is only requiring, that, while, 
"not slothful in business," in doors or out, 
you be " fervent in spirit, serving the 
Lord;" and that thus your children shall 
draw their first breath, and their daily 
breath, in a home of love and cheerfulness 
and contentment, and faith in God, and 
benevolent sympathies, and kind words, 
and heavenly aspirations. 



childhood's long dependence on pa- 
rental CARE. 



What, but to give parental influence 
time to mould the young, is 'the reason 
that it takes a dozen years or more to 



Christ's Infant' Kingdom. 8i 

bring a boy or girl forward to the same 
amount of physical, self-sustaining vigor 
whicb is reached by most animals in a 
single year? Some writers have set this 
down as a point of inferiority in the 
human race, compared with the lower 
races, that they are so soon able to cast off 
this oversight, while we must depend on it 
for a long period. But suppose that we 
needed to remain at home no longer than 
the brood of birds in their nest, or the 
young of the flocks and herds, where 
would be the opportunity to transmit 
character from sire to son ? To some, in 
truth, it would be a mercy, could they 
dispense with the care of those who 
brought them into this world, as early as 
the brute which perishes can do without 
its mother. And so it might have been 

6 



82 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

in all cases of human birth so far as our 
bodily make is concerned. We could 
have been endowed with strength and 
instinct enough for this speedy self-protec- 
tion, had this been all. But the whole 
arrangement for the propagation of man- 
kind contemplated these facts, — that 
parents should be worthy to transfer by 
home-nurture their moral likeness to their 
offspring, and should have years enough 
of slow and gentle and most confidential 
intercourse with them, and influence over 
them, in which effectually to do it. This 
was the original family-idea ; nor has the 
outbreak of sin among men altered any 
thing of the intention of the family, — its 
laws and obligations. 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 83 

HOME GOVERNMENT. 

There will not be need for much of this 
if the home spirit is right; or, rather, it 
will be a government which will so jus- 
tify its goodness, even in severity, that it 
will be accepted cheerfully as just and 
kind. 

But we must not be betrayed into ideal 
speculations. These children, even if under 
the moulding of the Divine Spirit, are still 
but children, unripe in wisdom, experience, 
seK-knowledge, imperfect and sinful. If 
grown-up Christians need government, 
y6ung Christians also need it ; and young 
aliens from Christ need it yet more. 

Authority is vested in parental hands. 
It is to be asserted, maintained, used, in 
family administration. To discard it, and 



84 Christ^ s Infant Kingdom. 

to attempt to supply its place with other 
suasions, is to run against divine teachings 
and true philosophy. Yet while authority 
is to be felt in the home as the pervading 
presence of its very life, — its foundation 
under it, and its roof over it, — it should be 
so manifestly a Christian authority, that it 
will no more be disputed by the young 
wills and consciences there than is the 
dominion of God over all right natures. 
It is the authority of the heavenly Father 
delegated to the family head : '' Children, 
obey your parents in the Lord ; for this is 
rifht." 

There is no necessary connection between 
authority and harshness; no opposition 
between steady and even stern government, 
and the spirit of love. It is a slander on 
love to call it blind. It is a poor sort of 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 85 

love which has no eyes to see peril and 
wrong, and no hand to hold back, with the 
infliction (if need be) of present pain, the 
inexperienced and the endangered. The 
love of God is no such soft and easy and 
nerveless a thing as that. Fear and pun- 
ishment have their proper place in his ad- 
ministration. They will be wanted within 
call in the most Christian house. Yet they 
are not to be called in, except in the last 
resort ; but they are to be known as lying 
back among the resources of domestic dis- 
cipline, — a real fact to fall back upon when 
absolutely required as the ultimate defenc# 
of the parental supreinacy. And being 
thus known, even as we know that the Al- 
mighty Father, with all his tender-hearted- 
ness, has a rod and a scourge always within 
reach, they will only the more demonstrate 



86 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

how worthy is that human parent of the 
profoundest respect and affection. 

The ideal conception of government, like 
every thing else in a Christian home, should 
be as a means of holy nurture. Its end is 
not just to have this or that order obeyed, 
but to form a spirit of obedience, a subjec- 
tion of the will to that which is right. 

Hence all commands and wishes should 
be conscientiously right ; and they should 
be expressed in a right temper, with no 
blustering agitation or heated menace. 
And if, unhappily, they involve the enforce- 
«nent of punishment (as very seldom they 
should need to), this is to be inflicted in the 
most tender, prayerful. Christian temper of 
aU. 

Commands should be thoughtfully and 
rightly given, then never recalled or evad- 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 87 

ed: but they should be carried through, 
slowly if best, but surely ; without chas- 
tisement, if possible- to avoid it ; but if this 
becomes necessary, then time and place 
(always alone) are to be wisely selected. 
And never begin severely, but gently, yet 
firmly, watching most carefully the effect ; 
pausing to mark it, to put in kind and win- 
ning words, to hold your own temper in 
most complete control : but never dismiss 
the case until you have good evidence that 
the will of your child has sincerely sub- 
mitted to your own. 

You see the delicacy of this matter of* 
the home government : it forbids a rough, 
exacting, teazing, spasmodic management 
of children, — all sugar one hour, and 
all vinegar for a good many more than the 
next. It looks to a subdual of the will, 



88 Christy's Infant Kingdom. 

not a breaking of it (there is a world- 
wide difference here). We want men and 
women of unbending wills, but not of 
stubborn wilfulness. Family government 
in all its processes looks to a cheerful sub- 
mission of the will to duty, to right, to 
holiness, to Christ : it must not rest in any 
end short of this. If it does, it fails of its 
Christian office. If it be merely a trial 
of strength between parent and child, of 
cunning, of persistence, or any thing of 
this kind, you will gain no real mastery 
of that child: you will educate it into a 
hypocrite or a stouter rebel. If, on the 
contrary, your child sees, from its earliest 
perceptions, that you are using your paren- 
tal authority in the same spirit, and for the 
same ends, that you pray in your houshold, 
and fill it with the sunHght of your Chris- 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 89 

tian love and grace, it will be a short 
struggle, if any, which you will have, to 
bring every loving heart in that charmed 
circle into habitual dutifulness to you as 
put by God over that circle of young hearts 
to connect it with the family of the Lord in 
heaven. Does this require much grace? 
Certainly. But does it require any more 
than every Christian should have, may 
have, — may daily exercise? 

CASES OF HOME DISCIPLINE. 

One or two examples of correction will 
illustrate the importance of not yielding 
until the will of the child is subdued. 

A little girl between two and three years 
of age had manifested, one morning, a pe- 
culiarly unlovely and refractory spirit. 
Being the first-born of that family, it was 



^O Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

felt to be especially needful thoroughly to 
settle the principle of obedience in her 
case. The father — a clergyman — laid 
aside his usual work, took his daughter 
alone to a chamber, explained to her as 
clearly as he could wherein she was wrong, 
and told her kindly, but firmly, that neither 
would leave the room until he was satisfied 
of her sincere repentance, and surrender to 
his will. Hours passed before that point 
was reached; but reached it was, at last 
(and that without any other chastisement), 
in a tearful, heart-broken, intelligent giv- 
ing-up of that young rebellion. It was a 
severely painful trial to more than two 
hearts in that house ; but it never had to 
be repeated. It broke up the business-ar- 
rangements of a day; but it saved hours 
and days of after trouble. It placed upon 



ChrisVs Infant Kingdom. 91 

a thousand subsequent acts and feelings 
the seal of an easy submission to parental 
government. That little girl gave good 
evidence of Christian character before she 
ceased to be a little girl. 

A second example. The son of another 
clergyman, scarcely beyond infantile years, 
came up to his father's study-table, and 
taking up his watch by the chain, which 
was hanging within his reach, retreated to 
the other side of the room. The father 
called him to bring it back. The boy 
would not obey. The father, holding out 
his hand, bade him put the watch in it. 
Still he refused. Again and again he was 
bidden to do it. At length the child reluc- 
tantly began to come towards the table. 
The struggle against submission was giv- 
ing way under the steady eye of the father, 



92 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

until the half-yielding boy held the watch 
directly over his parent's hand. Still the 
order was to place it therein. But, while 
yet for a moment the hesitating boy debat- 
ed the point of doing as he was told, the 
father hastily caught the watch from his 
grasp. The child had conquered. He felt 
it ; and that father felt it, and years after 
he said, that, from that unfortunate day, he 
never had evidence of a hearty yielding of 
that boy's will to his on a debated point. 
A superficial obedience was the most which 
he could secure. Do you say that a thing 
like that is a mere trifle ? So is the hinge 
that swings the massive gate of a city ; so 
is the spark which explodes a magazine. 
The smallest divergence from a right line, 
if followed out, will by and by make an 
immense and an immeasurable divergence. 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 93 

HOME TEACHING AND DEVOTION. 

I join these together, because religious 
instruction should always be saturated with 
devout feeling. If it ever is dry, hard, re- 
pulsive to the young, the reason is, that it 
is attempted as head-work and will-work, 
without much, if any, heart in it. Chil- 
dren, above all others, are to be reached 
through the affections. 

Family religious teaching should not be 
set off by itself as a thing apart from all 
other interests. It should not be confined 
to the Lord's Day, nor to any set way of 
inculcation. It should blend itself with 
the other interests of life, and flow in natu- 
rally and freely with the stream of daily 
thought and conversation. There should 
be nothing forced or sanctimonious in deal- 



94 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

ing religiously with cMdhood. Young 
minds are quick to detect pretences : they 
catch by intuition the motive and feeling 
of others. If they see that you bring them 
up to a lesson of this sort because the time 
has come, and you think you ought to, you 
will only disgust them with the whole sub- 
ject of Christian truth and devotion. 

Religious conversation should be easy 
and spontaneous in a religious home, — the 
most so of any conversation in it. It should 
readily start from a hundred things suggest- 
ing the care and love of God, the purity 
and the sympathy of Jesus, the spiritual 
value of life, the expected blessedness of 
heaven. 

The religious lessons of childhood should 
follow, as a rule, the capacity of its years. 
The Bible is its great storehouse ; and 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 95 

surely, for the beginnings of this instruc- 
tion, the narratives of both Testaments are 
just the subjects adapted to interest and 
benefit the opening mind. Children never 
weary of Scripture stories ; and nothing can 
take the place of these as a power over 
the young spirit to mould it aright. No 
one will .question that the teaching given 
should, for the most part, be within the 
child's comprehension. ' Yet I dissent 
from the opinion, that there should be no 
lessons given beyond this limit; for we 
all have to learn many such lessons as long 
as we live. Why, then, should not the 
young begin to do so ? This, too, is abso- 
lutely necessary in order to cultivate the 
principle and habit of faith* Christ's rule 
is not, believe only what you can see, but 
blessed is he, who, not seeing, still believes. 



96 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

This rule is as good for the first years of 
life as for the last. And let this be noted, 
that s(3epticisni has increased in the world 
just as this modern notion has gained sway, 
that you must teach children nothing but 
what they can understand about God and 
Christ, and the soul and religion. Imbib- 
ing this fallacy in childhood, they most 
naturally demand to carry it out in after- 
years : and it will carry them out to half- 
way or utter infidelity. It is a proud am- 
bition which can never give the repose of 
heart which we all need. It shuts off 
heaven from the soul as completely as the 
brass slide kept closed at the end of a tele- 
scope will shut from the eye the splendors 
of the starry sky. 

Consequently, while making the easy 
portions of the Bible the staple of Chris- 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 97 

tian teaching in the family, this instruction 
should be judiciously strengthened with a 
simple statement of the fundamental doc- 
trines of redemption, as also being repealed 
facts to be learned and remembered ; with 
little or no attempts to explain them 
further than can be easily followed. They 
are to be received on trust until they shall 
be more fully understood. 

For eighteen hundred years, the Church 
relied on catechetical instruction as a neces- 
sary part of the Christian training of its 
youth. Within fifty years, this has been 
decried as unphilosophical, irrational, an- 
tiquated, oppressive. Whence this cry? 
From the camp of the sceptics and that 
wing of the Christian communion which 
lies nearest them. This kind of teaching 
should be restored in our families and 
7 



98 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

churches, but in a simpler form than that 
in which it used to be given. One of our 
pressing denominational wants is a cate- 
chism for the young, which shall be more 
devotional than dogmatic in its character, 
dealing less with sharply-cut definitions 
for the intellect, and more with living and 
moving appeals to the heart. Such a help 
to domestic and pastoral instruction 
would be 'warmly welcomed in hundreds 
of our homes. 

What other aids to this instruction may 
be used should be cautiously selected by 
parents and teachers, whether in the form 
of religious newspapers for the young or for 
older readers ; for the children will not be 
content without a sight of what their eld- 
ers read. In the department of religious 
biographies, and particularly of religious 



Christ's I7ifa7it Kmgdom. 99 

novels, this care should be constant and 
close ; and, if it was, the numbei^ of these 
books would undergo a rapid and large 
diminution. K nine out of every dozen 
of the last-named volumes could be turned 
again into blank paper, the moral and spir- 
itual dangers of our young people would be 
immensely lessened. 

PAIlE>Tg CA^rS^OT DELEGATE THIS WORK. 

This ofl&ce of instruction cannot be 
turned over by parents to other hands. It 
inheres in the family constitution as much 
as nursing: and feeding^ and clothingr your 
offspring. It would be no stranger for you 
to send your children out to your neighbors 
for these cares than to rely, for example, 
on the Sabbath school for their Christian 
education. Here is a fearful neglect of 



lOO Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

parental duty and privilege. Thousands 
of our church-members have actually con- 
signed this grave matter to Sabbath-school 
teachers, who may or may not be compe- 
tent to such a work, — many of them not 
fathers or mothers themselves, and with 
no personal consciousness, therefore, of pa- 
rental solicitudes. But if they are, and 
if they were most competent to this duty, 
they are not these children's parents, and 
as such will never have to answer for these 
children's souls. 

The Sabbath school has its important 
work to do. It may greatly aid the work 
of the Christian parent. It has a special 
and wide field of labor among the irreh- 
gious families and masses of Christendom. 
And the Church should also sustain it by 
its presence and influence to give it stand- 



Christ's hifant Kingdom. loi 

ing and power, as much as it sustains the 
public and social worship of God. But 
the Sabbath school must not foster, with- 
out a constant protest, parental negligence 
and unfaithfulness. Parents can turn it 
to their help every week, by making it a 
point to look after the preparations of their 
children for the school-lesson, and then 
following up its labors with their own ad- 
ditional counsels and prayers. 

The daily worship of God in the assem- 
bled household is a power for holiness 
which no faithful and consistent Christian 
will neglect. It lies very close to the ful- 
filment of this gracious promise of the 
Lord : ''I will pour my Spirit upon thy 
seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring." 
A short selection of Scripture ; a brief, 
natural, and loving prayer ; a familiar 



I02 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

hymn of adoration, gratitude and trust, — 
these acts of devotion will not weary or 
disgust the youngest child. A simple, 
humble, fervent worship thus maintained, 
and inwoven with the first impressions of 
life, is one of the most undying of influ- 
ences which the human heart receives. 

So should the infant tongue be taught 
itself to pray, and to sing hymns of praise 
to Christ for his redeeming love. A Chris- 
tian's child should be taught from the be- 
ginning that he or she is Christ's; that 
they were made for him ; that they have 
been solemnly dedicated to him in baptism 
according to the eternal covenant of faith ; 
that they are more his children, by every 
right and bond, than they are ours. This 
idea should be a constant presence with 
them, — that they are to grow up in the 



Christ's Infant Kingdom. 103 

flock of the Good Shepherd as his lambs, 
his sheep, made his by regenerating grace ; 
that they are the very ones whom he 
meant, and now means, when he said, '' Suf- 
fer the little children to come unto me, 
and forbid them not; for of such is the 
kingdom of God." 

I bring these- pages to a close with an 
earnest appeal to the fathers and mothers 
who may read them to. take the truths 
now set forth into good and honest hearts. 
If there be a motive to draw a Christian 
parent closer to God, and a motive to 
draw an unchristian parent to Christ in a 
sincere conversion to his service, these 
children of yours are these motives, whom 
you should be leading with you every day 
heavenward. The parental tie is the most 
sacred thing on earth. God winds it 



I04 Christ's Infant Kingdom. 

around hearts here to make, through it, 
a circle of love and worship beyond this 
life. It is the channel along which he 
would pour the tides of holiness over this 
earth. Thus are the nations to be saved. 
The family is to fill the Church; the 
Church is to fill the world. 

'' Give, then, O Lord, thy holy Spirit to 
these little ones, that they may be born 
again, and be made heirs of everlasting sal- 
vation : through our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
liveth and reigneth with thee and the holy 
Spirit, now and forever. Ameny 



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